How to Find and Use Media Assets (Legally)

How to Find and Use Media Assets for Free (Legally)

Before pulling images, videos, sound files, or music assets off the web to use in your online media project, it’s important to understand the rules and regulations for use. This resource is a guide to help you understand the basic terminology when looking for free media on the web and a few sources we’ve curated.

Disclosure: This is for informational purposes only and is not to be considered legal advice.
It is your responsibility to consult a qualified lawyer for legal advice.

Understanding Basic Terminology

Copyright: the exclusive legal right, given to an originator or an assignee to print, publish, perform, film, or record literary, artistic, or musical material, and to authorize others to do the same.

Licensing: grant a license to permit the use of something or to allow an activity to take place.

Attribution: acknowledging the author of a work. It most often requires the person’s name with the copyright symbol, and a link back to the source.

Public Domain: the state of belonging or being available to the public as a whole, and therefore not subject to copyright (be sure to check public domain status in each country.)

Creative Commons (CC): is a nonprofit organization that enables the sharing and use of creativity and knowledge through free legal tools. CC provides a standardized way to grant copyright permissions to an organization, individual or company’s creative work. Users are then granted a pool of content that can be copied, distributed, edited, remixed, and built upon, all within the boundaries of copyright law.

Royalty free: this generally indicates paying a one-time fee in exchange for the right to use a photograph, or media asset that is copyrighted, patented or trademarked according to agreed upon terms, with no ongoing license fees due for further use. This does not mean that the work is copyright free. The key here is to read the license terms and conditions, as often there are restrictions on how the asset can be used.

Creative Commons Licenses

Creative Commons has devised an easy to understand system that the creators of works can understand, their users can understand, and even the Web itself can understand. Use this table as a guide when searching for and choosing media. When using a CC media asset, be sure to check the licensing restrictions. CC is not an acronym for “free to use in any case.” More detailed information can be found at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/

Avoid copyright infringement.

When using media assets in your projects, on your website, or on social media, be sure to check the terms and conditions. In general, make the assumption media assets on the web are copyrighted.

Free and royalty free sound effects and clips for video editors, movie scores, game designers, and weekend sound warriors. Sound Bible also absorbed the catalog of the well-liked but now defunct PDSounds.org. http://soundbible.com/

freeSFX

A thorough library of sound effects from animals to weaponry. The licensing requires crediting and has restrictions. http://www.freesfx.co.uk/

This is the gold standard for finding quality free music. While the search is in need of improvement, they’ve recently added a section specific to music for videos. http://freemusicarchive.org/curator/video.

In addition, the about us page has additional resources in the event you’re not able to find exactly what you’re looking for.

YouTube recently added a library of music that you can download or add to videos. Many of them allow you to monetize your videos, though some may specify that you need to include an attribution in the video’s description. Many of the tracks found in this library can also be found at FreeMusicArchive (above), but YouTube spells out exact usage rights very clearly if you are going to be uploading your video to YouTube, and it’s nicely organized.

Video is still a relatively new area for CC media. This section includes sources for free and royalty free video assets, animations and motion graphics.

Vimeo

This often overlooked video platform has a large CC section. However, just because they’ve been marked as CC doesn’t mean they’ve been set up to allow downloading. You may have to use another program to be able to actually download the video. https://vimeo.com/creativecommons

Mazwai

It’s so new and so hip it comes with almost no instructions or explanation. This is a great repository of HD stock video footage. All the downloadable videos are under the Attribution license (CC BY 3.0). As with all downloads, read the license agreement carefully before using these videos.http://mazwai.com

Videvo

A growing archive of video clips, motion graphics and animations. Some free with conditions, others are royalty free (pay for use.) http://www.videvo.net/

YouTube

The largest site for videos has an option for videos to be licensed with CC (not to be confused with closed caption), but it’s hard to search for. You can check licensing on a case by case basis (in the “show more” tab.) A second option is to go to the editor page and use the search function after clicking the cc. https://www.youtube.com/editor CC videos will load based on keywords. For these there is no way to download the videos, so you’ll need to get a YouTube downloader program. For more information on YouTube’s policy on CC videos:https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/2797468?hl=en/

U.S. National Library of Medicine Digital Collections

A historical collection of health related videos with many produced by the US military.

A primarily mobile-based photo sharing network much smaller than Flickr, but it has some good CC photos. It also gives you the option to buy a commercials license for the photos.https://500px.com/creativecommons